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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoPHOTOS COURTESY OF TODD BEERYIn 2007, firefighters from Ohio tackle a wildfire in Utah. Volunteers from the Buckeye State have been coming to the aid of Western firefighters since 1986, in a program organized by the U.S. Forest Service.

The first few days can be the roughest, hauling packs loaded with gear up and down mountainsides in air that is thin on oxygen and thick with smoke and dust.

Once Columbus firefighter Todd Beery is re-acclimated, fighting wildfires each summer becomes familiar, but that doesn’t mean it gets easier.

“When we go out West, you know who stayed in shape and who didn’t,” he said.

For years, Beery, 44, has spent parts of his summers fighting wildfires as a member of the Ohio Interagency Fire Crew. He is one of about 200 Ohioans occasionally called upon to battle wildfires that burn through hundreds of thousands of acres in such states as Idaho, Colorado and Arizona, where 19 firefighters with the elite Granite Mountain Hotshots died on Sunday.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the lightning-sparked Yarnell Hill fire that killed the firefighters had burned through 8,400 acres by yesterday afternoon but was 80 percent contained.

The fire has burned up more acreage in a week than Ohio wildfires typically consume in two years. In Ohio, about 800 wildfires annually burn 4,000 to 5,000 acres, according to the state’s Division of Forestry.

Ohio’s wildfires tend to occur in the spring, before the vegetation greens up, said Aaron Kloss, a wildfire-prevention specialist with the forestry division. Kloss said the typical Ohio wildfire burns less than 10 acres, largely because our climate, terrain and weather aren’t as conducive to fire.

The relentless nature of the West’s fire season prompted a number of agencies to join forces in 1965. The U.S. Forest Service regularly summons reserves from across the U.S., and Ohio’s forestry division has been part of the effort since 1986.

“We’ve sent crews to just about every state,” said Kloss, who also fights fires with the interagency crew. As of last week, only one member was assisting out West, he said.

Ohio crew members train specifically to fight wildfires and must pass a fitness test. Their qualifications are a step below the expertise of hotshot crews such as the Prescott, Ariz., hotshots who were killed in the Yarnell Hill fire.

Beery said hotshots, who tend to be younger and tackle the hardest firefighting tasks on their 21-day tours, have marched by him on the way to fires at a pace that seems remarkable given the rugged country.

“Here comes a ’shot crew passing us, and it’s like, ‘Man, to be that age again,'" he said. "They’re probably some of the top-shape people in the world.”

If fighting a house fire is a sprint, fighting a wildfire is a marathon. Crews wield chainsaws and hand tools for 16 hours a day to clear firebreaks, hoping to stop fires that thrive in tinderbox conditions borne of sometimes triple-digit temperatures and single-digit relative humidities.

They constantly monitor the weather and rely on observers to study the fire’s behavior. They also plan escape routes, which often are “in the black,” Beery said, meaning burnt areas where no fuel remains.

He has never had to deploy his emergency shelter, an aluminized tent that is relied upon only as a last-ditch effort to survive.

“You have to do it right, and you have to do it quick,” Kloss said.

The tents are meant to shield a firefighter from intense heat and to preserve small amounts of breathable air while a fire passes, but they can fail. The decision by the 19 Arizona hotshots to deploy them suggested to Beery that they were out of options and that the fire’s behavior rapidly became nightmarishly extreme.